Real Estate Investor

About Us

Our Story

Terry Stallwood is an international Real Estate Investor and successful coach. A natural-born teacher, Terry started in Southern Ontario, just 3 days out of high school, when he first got a carpenter apprenticeship. Five years later Terry started his own business doing home renovations, building new homes. A few years later Terry decided to work with his dad and grandfather in the family owned dealership. Five years later Terry was name General Manager.

After 10 years Terry when back to his passion for real Estate and became the third owner of a real estate development company. They we’re buying properties, fixing and renovating, and that was probably the beginning of Terry renovating stage. That was in, the early eighties. Terry did that for quite a few years. Then he moved to Northern Ontario and bought a resort, ran it for 5 years. He thought, basically that he would be retired doing this. Owning a resort is huge work. It was nothing near retirement. After 5 years of that, Terry was burnt out, and got out of that. Terry started house construction again, fixing, buying selling, renovating. He bought an apartment block and just went from there.

Today Terry has over 45 years of experience as a contractor, realtor and investor. He owns revenue property in Winnipeg, Florida, Las Vegas and Honduras. He is also a Red Seal carpenter and mentors and coaches students how to find their own real estate opportunities. Terry still love doing renovating and buying but he is having more fun with training, mentoring and showing other people how to do this and make a living at it.

Terry love to do many joint venture partnering. That’s part of helping someone learn how to do it, is partner up with him or her and totally show him or her right through the whole thing on how to do it. It makes it easier than just trying to talk to somebody and tell him or her how to do it. If you can actually buy a place, have them hands on, Terry go through the whole thing from start to finish with his student partners. That way they really learn how to do it. It’s not anything like a theoretical classroom scenario. It’s actually hands on. Terry is always looking for a new deal, new students to mentor and coach and new JV partners to invest with.

Decades of Experience

We typically search the newspapers, Kijiji. Ask everybody we know if they know anybody else or have heard of anybody that wants to sell a house or get rid of something. Let’s see. The Bandit signs. You can always put out some Bandit signs but you have to be careful of city regulations doing that. They like fining people or stealing your signs.The main thing is just getting out there and talking to people. That’s what you got to do and search out any websites that you can find to do that. That’s how we typically find any houses. One of the best ways, too, is through a realtor that really knows how to do flip properties and investment properties. That’s one of the key points, too. Make sure you have the right realtor.

Money’s always a tough one. A lot of people will tell you to go and make a list of all your friends and all your family and try to get money from them. I’ve never had real good success with that and a lot of people I’ve seen that it never ended up well. Either you lose your friends or … You don’t lose your relatives but it can sure be a pain in the neck sometimes.We go mainly ourselves. We go to a lot of networking meetings. There’s all kinds of them for real estate investing. We deal with mortgage brokers, the odd bank, private money lenders, and other investors that don’t want to get involved in projects but they do have cash on hand now. There seem to be a lot of people there with either RRSPs that they want to flip over and use in real estate investing because they’re only making 1, 1 1/2, maybe 2% through the banks. Through real estate investing they can make anywhere from 10 to 18%. That’s always a good option. It’s just another thing. You got to get out there and talk to a lot of people. We can help you, introduce you to a lot of people that are lending money or private money lenders. That’s a lot of stuff that we do.

You need to be very careful on your contractors. You always want to make sure you get references from other people. If possible, go and see some of the work that they’ve done because when you’re talking to the contractor, they’re always the best. They might do good work and they might not. You have to check that out on your own. Do some due diligence. You just can’t take everybody’s word for anything anymore. You just got to check it and check it and check it.

If you’re capable of doing some work, you need to do as much as you possibly can because it’s the only real way that you can really learn how to do this, how much time it takes, and how much money it takes to fix it. You really need to know your costs when you’re doing these things. It never hurts to get in there and get dirty. Do your own rip out at least once. Maybe you’re not mechanically or carpentry inclined, but do … On especially your first flip, make sure you try to do as much of it as you can. If you’re not a good painter, I recommend don’t paint because that’s the first thing people are going to see when they walk in is the paint and you don’t want that all messed up. Especially on the tear out. If you want to plant some shrubs and change the lawn a bit, or whatever, just do whatever you can possibly do. The more you can do and the more you learn how to do, the more you’re going to know and the quicker you’re going to learn all of this. Just get your hands dirty.

That’s always a good question. You need to interview your realtors. You want to make sure that they are doing investment properties themselves. You don’t just want to just run up to any realtor because not many of them really know the real estate investment program. You want to make sure that they’re dealing with investors. They know how to do a proper walk through. There’s a different walk through if you’re only going to buy the house and move in. The walk through for an investment property is much more through and you really need to know, because it’s all dollars and cents to you. You’re not just going to move into this house and live in it as is. You got to go in there and fix and properly make it so it’s good to sell to another buyer that’s going to stay there for hopefully a long time. You need to really check out your realtors well. Ask around. Make sure they got good contacts because they have the contacts for money lenders, insurance people, mortgage brokers, and other investors that want to buy and sell properties. When you’re checking out a realtor, make sure you really go into depth. You don’t have to hire one the first day you’re out there trying to do this. Check them out.

All the major building supply companies. You want to go in there. You want to get to know one of the commercial salespeople. Get yourself a contractor’s card so you can get any discounts that are available. You need make sure you create a great rapport with the commercial salesperson. They can get bigger discounts than the advertised discounts. If you put a whole package together, they can get you a whole complete package discount. You need someone like that working on your side.Windows and doors. You need to find two or three good window suppliers and make sure they know you’re doing this full time. You’re going to be buying more than just one job because they want to deal with people that are ordering over and over and over. The more you buy, the more discounts you can receive. On just price, just make sure you know every sale that’s going on in the city and just keep checking them out and get there when it’s on sale. Pick up everything you can get.

When you finally find a property and you need to close on it, you have to have insurance the day it closes or before. All insurance people don’t know everything about investment properties. You need to find an insurance broker that specializes in investment properties, both residential and commercial, because anything over a 3 unit apartment block or like a fourplex is going into commercial insurance coverage.You need to know residential, commercial. You need to know somebody that is working on your side, not just selling you upgrades that you don’t really even need. The insurance guy needs to send it out to probably 6 or 8, at least, insurance companies. Price it out a lot and get you the best deal. It will be like hiring a realtor, you have to interview your insurance people.
If you get a good investment realtor, like I said before, that goes right along with they have their own insurance people and they can tell you people that absolutely know how to do this and can work for you. Check those out really well.

In my group, I have a power group that I call it. We have some financial people and they’re one of the only two in Manitoba. They can actually take your RRSPs and change them into a self-directed account and you can use those to buy and invest into real estate. Not everyone can do that. Not everyone will suggest you do that. Like the banks, if you’ve got them in your RRSPs with them, they don’t want you taking them out. They want you to make 1%. If you take them out, direct them, and put them into your own investments, then you can make way better income on them.